1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a unique food product comprising a bagel shell with materials conventionally used as bagel toppings, such as natural or imitation cream, enclosed within the shell. The product provides enjoyment of the distinctive bagel and cream cheese taste, with no requirement for cutting or spreading cheese. The product may be frozen either prior to or after steaming. Steaming a chilled cream cheese filled bagel dough product acts chemically to modify the cream cheese to allow it to be frozen, together with the bagel shell, so that the texture of the cream cheese, upon reheating, is substantially the same as if it had never been frozen. The invention further relates to methods for the production of the filled bagel product.
2. Discussion of the Related art
Bagels are a toroidally shaped bakery product having a hard outer crust and soft inner crumb portion which combine to provide a distinctive "bagel" taste and feel. Traditionally, the dough is worked on a flour board and set in a warm place to rise, then kneaded again before being formed into rings. The rings are formed from balls of risen dough, either by poking a hole through the center of each ball or by rolling each ball into a long strip, shaping the strip into a ring, and then pressing the ends together.
An important step in the traditional bagel making process is boiling the yeast dough in water in order to close the pores of the dough to form a skin. Boiling is followed by baking in a hot oven to turn the crust golden brown.
A favorite way of enjoying bagels is to slice them in half, and spread a topping, such as cream cheese, on the cut surfaces. Bagels are characteristically cut open by slicing them across their width on a plane perpendicular to the axis of the toroid, and the topping is then spread on them. Because of the hard crust, the cutting process requires a sharp knife which can be hazardous. Further, due to the soft crumb interior, a slightly dull knife will crush the hard crust into the soft crumb interior, compacting the interior, which detracts from appearance and taste. Moreover, such planar cut is typically awkward and does not result in two planar halves. Spreading the cream cheese on the bagel may also be tedious as the cream cheese is stored in a refrigerator and is very viscous until it warms.
It is known to include certain flavorings or fillers on or in bagel dough, such as unions, poppy seeds, salt, or raisins. These are materials which have substantially the same handling characteristics as bagel dough: they can withstand the heat of cooking, and are relatively stable at room temperature for extended periods of time. These materials are not what one would consider a "topping".
Although bagels and cream cheese go together during consumption, bagels and cream cheese are very different chemically, and have different storage and handling requirements. Cream cheese is perishable, thermally sensitive, and easily contaminated, and is thus conventionally maintained in a chilled state until use. Cream cheese can not be frozen and thawed without separation of liquids and solids, nor can it be left exposed to air at room temperature for extended periods, nor can it be subject to the high temperatures at which bagel dough is cooked. Thus, for reasons of product preparation as well as for reasons of food storage and handling, it would be counter-intuitive to incorporate cream cheese into a bagel dough shell.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,236,724 entitled "Filled Bagel Dough Product and Method" which issued to the present inventor was first to describe a technique by which cream cheese could actually be incorporated into a bagel dough shell. However, the filled bagel dough product is disclosed as being in the shape of a ball. A ball-shaped product has inherent limitations, both in the cooking process and in the consumption process. A bagel dough ball product, while having advantages of being compact, relatively stable at room temperature, and easy to handle, is necessarily limited in size, since a cream cheese filled bagel ball, if too large, can not be easily eaten by a consumer. Further, a sphere has a minimal outer surface area and a dome shaped upper surface area. These two factors make it rather difficult to provide toppings on a bagel ball.
While there is no suggestion for the production of a filled bagel product in a shape other than a ball, the present inventor undertook to modify the shape, and discovered that there are significant problems with the handing of a raw bagel dough article filled with cream cheese. These problems included the problem of stretching the bagel dough shell until the shell was too thin or ruptured, and the problem of joining a first bagel dough surface to a second bagel dough surface after one or both surfaces had been contacted by cream cheese.
There is thus a need for a filled bagel dough product which represents an improvement over the bagel ball. There is also a need for methods for the production of such improved products.